Rook (7 page)

Ada rubs her palms together, rubs her upper arms. Giovanni and all the talk of Spain has made her long for the heat. How she adored those hot climates! Though in the latter years, she believes working long days in the heat affected Brian’s mind. Unlike him to be whimsical – he was a man who measured and recorded with meticulous detail – but what he had described to her was most strange. After he left she’d been unable to shake off his words. They clung like a premonition. When he was excavating a tomb or a burial mound, he said, he’d feel the sweat on his back or neck cooled, as if by a shadow. Then he knew by a drop in temperature he was in the presence of the dead. Concentrating on the point of his trowel, his tools, the digging, while the shadows of their presence breathed at his shoulder, crowding him as they spurred him on to dig faster and for longer.

Their whispers drive me
. Those were his words.

The night they rowed, Brian started on again, about telling Nora. He brought the matter up every time he was home. Sod’s law, the things you want to forget are the things which haunt you.

She will understand
, he said,
she’s old enough. She’s mature for her age
.

It’s not all about Nora, she’d told him.

No, it’s about honesty
. That’s what he said.

And what might that imply? Her indignation rises even now.

Brian packed his canvas holdall for the trip and left the house that night. A minor disagreement. When the project was over, he surely would have come back, if it hadn’t been for the accident. The thought makes her quite tearful, imagining their reunion, the generosity of her forgiveness, in the old house which Brian did love so much but she has always hated, ever since she was a girl. None the less, here she remains, paddling in this backwater. But she must pull herself together.

At the bar, Jason pushes a bowl of peanuts towards her. ‘Tapas,’ he says with a wink, ‘like in Spain.’

Impossible to have a private conversation anywhere in this place.

Eric shuffles in with his shoulder bag of second-hand books and takes his usual place, the stool in the dark corner near the door where he can sit and nurse his pint. Customers walk straight past him. Just as well since his coat carries the back-of-the-throat fumes of a mouldy flannel.

Always a strange one, Eric – another who could never be provoked to anger. He’d just stand with his big, piano-player hands dangling, staring at his tormentors, the boys from the council estate. At the village school he was bullied so much, his parents, who had money, paid a woman to teach him at home. Ada used to play in the millstream with him as a girl, when she was home from boarding school. ‘Lift me up to the bank, Eric,’ she’d say. She raised her arms to feel those strong fingers hot around her ribs.

His face is so ancient now, eyebrows shaggy as draught excluders, and he has a habit of staring at the flagstones even when she’s talking to him. He smiles to himself, never looking anyone in the eye. Loves the pianos he looks after better than any person – owns a house full of them – and he’s the best piano tuner for miles around. In demand by those in the know.

Ada puts a hand on Eric’s arm to call his attention, lifts it to his cheek, where the bristles are silvery-sharp as metal shavings. He has always responded to her touch. Tonight she asks him about the swans, to get him talking, to get his eyes to lift to hers.

Rain, wind or shine, he tells her, every day on my bike.

He takes three dog-eared paperbacks from his bag and heaps them on the bar before removing the top book and laying it on the beer towel, to reorder his pile. When he goes home, the books will still be there, left in whatever order he finally decides is best. They are his gift. Eric travels into Chichester every morning on the early morning bus with the schoolchildren, as he has done every morning for thirty years. He stares at his own feet – great plates of meat – as he shuffles down the aisle and hands out free second-hand books. The mystery is, all the young people love him.

‘Know them all.’ He nods, rearranging his books, lining up the battered spines. ‘Every one of this year’s.’

The cygnets are half-grown now, almost adults in size if not in plumage. When Eric tells her this, Ada thinks again of Flick, living the high life in Spain; the granddaughters she hardly ever sees. Every day, Eric sees his swans, his babies.

Making her way back to a seat near the fire, Ada would have tripped on the uneven edge of a flagstone, if Harry hadn’t come in at that moment and caught her arm at the elbow, steadying her. Solid as a rock, that man.

Jason has let the fire die down and Ada’s feet, in her new kitten-heeled sandals, are cold. Not June yet.
Ne’er cast a clout
.

Brian teased her. Said she misunderstood. Told her ‘May’ refers to hawthorn blossom, not the month.
There is some debate
, he said in that earnest way of his. A ‘clout’ is a slab of mud, earth turned over by a plough. He’d witter on about alternative meanings of words until she was utterly bemused.

The saccharin in tonic water always leaves such a bad taste in one’s mouth.

Whatever the month, an invitation from Flick to visit them all in Spain would not go amiss. Ada needs to get away from the chill which seeps up through the thin soles of her sandals.

Harry brings her a fresh gin and tonic but the glass is too cold to touch. She rubs her palms together again and holds them towards the smouldering logs, hoping Harry might take her hands in his to stop her shivers.

The ice cracks and settles downwards; bubbles fizz round the lemon slice. Mint. Robert. She gives a little shake of her head to free herself from that particular circle of thought. The air is too sharp for gin.

Harry is drinking his usual. She’s not seen him drink it in the pub before.

‘I didn’t think Jason had the right ingredients.’ A little of his drink spills when she points.

‘All OK, Ada?’

‘I forget, what is it called?’

‘
Sol y sombra
.’

‘I had an idea it was Spanish, am I right?’

Harry nods. ‘A drink they have with coffee sometimes to start the day. Sun and shade. They say the name comes from the seats at a bullring.’

‘Ghastly!’

Once, when Ada visited Flick in Spain she’d eaten an entire meal seated beneath the stuffed head of a bull. A black one. Nostrils flared over her hair. She’d thought of nothing all evening but the stickiness of blood, the frightful stab and thrust of violence.

Harry is talking about bullfights, about the most expensive seats having some sun and some shade. ‘As in life, a balance.’ He swirls the drink in his glass, mixing the clear anis and brandy together.

‘Absolutely.’ She has not quite followed his gist. Clearly he’s not still talking about the weather, but the mention of shade has carried Brian back into her thoughts again, Brian surrounded by his whispers from the past.

No point crying over spilled milk.        

Nora came home at Christmas. A mother can tell these things and Nora spoke, when pressed, of a man with a Jewish-sounding name, an older man who spent a lot of time abroad, travelling. Ada kept her thoughts to herself. Nora went back to London as usual and Ada waited in vain for news until, out of the blue – Ada throws her hands up in exasperation, and notices she is perhaps speaking her thoughts aloud. ‘Out of the blue she comes home again. Spring, it would’ve been this time. She is far too thin and she drinks, shut away in her room, when she would never drink before because of the music, and she is a wreck. My first thought was an attack of nerves, but Nora? She’s a flibberty-gibbet, but much too strong for all that nonsense. Well equipped to look after number one, that girl.’

Ada is about to go on, but something stops her. She has not mentioned her thoughts on this to anyone. A family matter is, after all, best kept behind closed doors. The gin has loosened her tongue. But – her thoughts move and settle like the melting cubes of ice – she surely has only got as far as telling Harry about the love affair. Harry, bless him, who gazes into his drink as if it will tell his fortune, does not engage in tittle-tattle. He, however, is not Family.

Ada sips her gin and decides to sidestep the issue. ‘Nora has simply allowed guilt to destroy her life.’ She sighs. ‘My guess is, she discovered not only was he Jewish, he was also married.’

Harry gives her a look she cannot for the life of her fathom. He says nothing, which gives her the feeling she may have spoken out of turn.

‘He was a powerful man.’ She stops. She has forgotten of whom she was speaking – someone important. She brushes white flakes of plaster from her sleeve. In places, the walls are stained brown from sea water which has washed in and out of the pub over the years, one landlord after another marking the height of the floodwater on the wall by the bar. Plaster peels in flakes which drift to the floor. A year or two back the water was very high. Jason added his mark to the wall, to record the level, the highest yet. Of course:
Cnut
. Cnut was a powerful man. His daughter, the little princess buried in the church. Brian was of the opinion, since there are no records anywhere of this daughter, Cnut may have had a love affair.

‘The child was probably illegitimate,’ she says to Harry.

‘Not a problem,’ says Harry. ‘There’s no stigma.’

Time to leave, once she has finished her gin. She lifts the glass to her lips but the gin has gone. The pub is almost in darkness, only one lamp still alight; Jason is wiping down the bar. She turns her empty glass round and round on the cardboard mat. Where has every one disappeared to? She finds she has tears in her eyes. ‘Have you a hankie, Harry darling?’

Harry goes to the bar and comes back with a pocket-sized pack of tissues. She wipes her eyes and turns to him. ‘Harry? My daughter tells me nothing!’

They are walking past the church – not the quickest route back to Creek House but with the melancholy turn of her thoughts all evening, Ada has a feeling she may have insisted on coming this way. Brian has a theory about the little girl’s grave, a theory he keeps to himself. ‘First, I need to do more detective work,’ he says. She turns to ask him if it was one of his shades who pressed this story upon him and finds it is Harry’s arm on which she is leaning.

Harry puts his other hand over hers. ‘Did you want to go in?’ Ada nods.

The church is skeletal, beams like the ribs of some colossal beast arching high above. Each movement, even a breath, creates a disturbance, an echo which shifts the dust. How close she is, here, where the words on gravestones laid in the aisle have been blurred by the passing of feet, to the dead. Ada leans towards Harry. His body radiates heat, but he crouches down to look closely at the memorial slab.

‘Couldn’t even get that right, could they?’ Ada flicks a hand. ‘The grave is under the centre of the chancel arch, not here.’

‘They had their reasons,’ Harry says. ‘Don’t know what they were, that’s all.’

She could tell Harry. With Harry, the story would be safe.

June

9

The lane runs so straight because it was once a Roman road, or so they say. Nora’s feet take steady, regular steps; her sandals flash in and out from below the hem of her dress. Some stitching is unravelling and the thread tickles her calf. Between Nora’s shoulder blades, beneath the cello case, her dress sticks to her skin. She takes longer strides so that the walk won’t swallow so much time; she’s already late because of the staff meeting, and she should cook something for Ada before Miss Macleod’s lesson – the last of the day.

From the creek comes the ching-ching-ching of halyards against masts and a sudden briny gust tells her the tide is on the turn, sea water pushing into Salthill Creek, frilling over silt and weed to float the leaning boats. She’s almost there. She lifts her head to the breeze, worrying about Rachel, her star pupil, whose playing today was accurate, as always, but lacked pungency, as if Rachel herself was not listening acutely enough to the music she was playing.

Ahead, some youths are crouched in a huddle by the ditch. Nora hitches her cello case upwards, lifting the straps from her collar-bone. As she approaches, two of the youths straighten, jaws chewing, to give her a sullen stare over their shoulders. Jeans swag low across their buttocks and the tongues of their trainers are swollen. They’re not from the village, nor does she know them from any of the schools where she teaches. A sheet from the Neighbourhood Watch through the door yesterday warned of a recent spate of lawnmower thefts and garage break-ins, LOCK UP! USE YOUR CHAIN! scrawled in capitals across the bottom. She’d screwed up the note and chucked it in the bin.